Take Care of Your Hands

Melanie Ramos 3 min. of reading Personal Care Leave a comment

Even though sports are our passion, sometimes we don’t notice the little things, and the smallest links go unnoticed, so: take care of your hands!

Many of us like the feel of bars, dumbbells, and machines on our skin when training, we don’t like gloves, and most of the time, this causes calluses, blisters, or cracks on our hands, but there’s a way to fix this little problem.

Sports take a toll on your hands

Gymnasts, weightlifters, strongman exercises, climbing, racket sports, and basically any activity involving friction from gripping movements have one thing in common: rough, hardened hands from the work that often end up with abrasions and raised calluses.

That said, we can use gear that limits friction, like Training Gloves.

Take care of your hands, you’ll thank yourself…

However, many people find these aids uncomfortable, whether because they prevent proper sliding on bars, make gripping harder by adding thickness, or simply limit the feel of the object.

The thing is, even small wounds on your hands are a serious problem for the normal flow of our activities, so taking care of them becomes an important part of our routine

Use creams to hydrate your hands

Smoothing rough spots and moisturizing with cream can reduce their size while keeping some hardness to prevent wounds, but what can you do once the damage is done and your hands have cracks and raised calluses?

If you’ve ever done sport climbing, whether on rock or at a climbing gym, during the first weeks, until your skin toughens and your fingers get used to the daily grind, you’ve probably seen how badly your hands take a beating.

But for beginners, there are specific creams to ease these problems, and we shouldn’t go without them

Take care of your hands with climbing creams

Those creams used by rookie climbers will help us improve cracked skin and small calluses on bodybuilders’ hands.

Once you’re advanced, your hands will be so tough and calloused that creams won’t do much; in fact, calluses and rough spots are usually filed down to leave the skin smoother.

Nowadays, there are ointments like blastoestimulin, widely used in performance sports, which is basically gotu kola extract combined with the antibiotic neomycin.

Take care of your hands with gotu kola extract

Gotu kola extract promotes, protects, and speeds up healing.

On one hand, it works by incorporating and fixing two key amino acids for structural protein biosynthesis, alanine and proline, into collagen, stimulating granulation tissue; on the other, it helps proper epithelialization by stimulating glycosaminoglycan biosynthesis, contributing to rebuilding the amorphous matrix.

Topical use of gotu kola or the ointment carries almost no risks, as the only side effects might be irritation and stinging in cases of hypersensitivity.